111–120 of 302 posts
Resources:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility
https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/tools/list
https://developer.apple.com/accessibility/
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/develop/acces...
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If I'm putting out a free app as a single developer, I don't have the time or money to do everything. If it becomes popular, I can use metrics to improve the accessibility situation. If government regulations are going to insist I have to put that investment in day 1, I'll just take up badminton or something.
I disagree with this take, most app frameworks do accessibility mostly right out of the box, it's just most developers never enabled voice over in their life, so they keep modifying the UI and messing up accessibility out of ignorance. It's not that hard, and if every developer spent an afternoon looking into things, they'd realize how easy it is to get it right if the team is aware of it. I'd not mind if like develo…
I think 'accessibility' can be reframed as being more generally about flexible configuration and control for everyone to benefit from.
For such personal devices it's not just about about disability, it's about the freedom I want as a user to mold an interface to actually fit me and my usage style moment to moment. Sometimes I want a screen read to me or just a section of it. I'm not visually impaired, I just might not want to look at the screen.
For the last 12 years of his life, my father was in an electric wheelchair as a result of a stroke. Prior to that, I was vaguely aware of ADA compliance - basically because there were posted signs everywhere about parking spaces and restroom stalls. It was only after seeing the ease with which he could navigate the world in spite of his chair that I appreciated how important that law was, because I also saw so many t…
Tangentially related, but it's a bit interesting to see how many men get "radicalized" after being on paternity leave and pushing a stroller around. I'm volunteering on a board for an organization that (among other things) works for more accessible streets (more from an angle of less car dependence though), and we get lots of new members with this revelation. Suddenly they hate getting from point A to B; "It's just a…
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Maybe required by EU law? Not a friend of accessibility though. It requires so much work to satisfy a small base of users.
You’re being downvoted but this is true - most accessibility work seems to be generated by the accessibility industry, and is focused on short term fixes (modifying every website) rather than long-term solutions (fixing web browsers for disabled people).
For the last 12 years of his life, my father was in an electric wheelchair as a result of a stroke. Prior to that, I was vaguely aware of ADA compliance - basically because there were posted signs everywhere about parking spaces and restroom stalls. It was only after seeing the ease with which he could navigate the world in spite of his chair that I appreciated how important that law was, because I also saw so many t…
It's quite hard to notice a lot of these things before you actually have to deal with them. I knew ramps were needed and automatic doors, but the shock was more about little things. But, a big thing I've noticed is that like 90% of things that would help us would make lives easier for normal people too. Which this was a big thing that opened my mind of how to address a lot of accessibility, is just think more deeply. If it affects a wheelchair it also affects a stroller, your wheeled baggage, things being dropped between cracks/small gaps, being able to clean between gaps (and subsequently the mold, water damage, grime, etc that makes things more costly in the long run!), your robot delivery drone, whatever. Ironically making the world more accessible for wheel-chaired people makes the world easier to robotize, which in turn can then also help disabled people. But the lesson is to think deep, because there are so many parallels. So if you hit upon one, you benefit the others. So you don't need to sit around thinking of every possible disability to make things accessible, which is a big blessing in itself. But if you think with care you will make the world much more accessible. No one expects to be perfectly accessible to everyone and disabled people know the world isn't going to bend to them, but that also doesn't mean we shouldn't try and care for our friends and family (other humans). But since it can help, just remember that a lot of things that help them will also help you.
I do my best to make all of my apps at least vision-impaired accessible. The last app, I figured a way to make that easier to manage, and reward use by non-disabled folks. I have a long-press help feature. If you long-press on any element in the UI, up pops a popover, with a header, and body text, pointing at the element. The popover explains that element. It's fairly easy to have a long-press gesture recognizer appl…
Say what you want about Apple, they hit the nail on the head when it comes to A11y APIs
* Almost
The universal good, and unappreciated reality, about accessibility is that it benefits everyone. Wheelchair ramps aren’t limited to wheelchairs. I have above average hearing despite my advancing age and I choose to apply subtitles to digital movies about half the time because it provides me a better more enriching experience. Solving for color contrast limitations benefits everyone even when people have perfect visio…
I saw another IRL example of this in yet another football match over the weekend where one team was in a blue jersey with the other team in a black jersey. I'm not even color blind, yet it was hard for me to immediately distinguish players. I really miss the old days of home team in their club's color, with the away team in a predominately white jersey.
So not even remotely UI/front-end related to a tech forum, but color contrast is a basic way humans separate things. It is not nice to mess with that for normal things.
The universal good, and unappreciated reality, about accessibility is that it benefits everyone. Wheelchair ramps aren’t limited to wheelchairs. I have above average hearing despite my advancing age and I choose to apply subtitles to digital movies about half the time because it provides me a better more enriching experience. Solving for color contrast limitations benefits everyone even when people have perfect visio…
Disabilities can be conflicting which makes catering to all difficult.
Consider, for example, that someone who is deaf will usually use a flashing light to wake them up. However, if you are someone that's prone to seizures, that flashing light is now something that can trigger a medical emergency.
Now consider how fire alarms typically work, big flashing lights and loud sirens.
With accessibility you kind of can't please everyone. Not saying you shouldn't try, but there needs to be some level of "best effort" applied.
I would never agree with this statement of the author: "You won’t stop until everybody is using your app." Why ? All the apps I ever build (or participate in their development) where targeted to the fit the most, without sacrificing the business requirements or other important/critical aspects of the app. Otherwise will end-up with an unusable product.
You should see how ADA requirements are practically impossible or completely break design. The high contrast of font to background requirement is so extreme that most major sites and even ADA related sites fail. Things like alt text is so time consuming it would be incredibly expensive to label all the images. Facebook has long resorted to using AI descriptions. Really it shouldn't be up to the developer it should be…
No, that’s the wrong analogy. The ADA is there to ensure that people with wheelchairs can find a barrier-free entrance to a building, and a curb cut at an intersection.
It should be on us, the developers, to ensure our apps work with the tools of the trade to enable people with limitations. So, our apps should be usable by screen readers. The screen reader is the analogue to the wheelchair here.
This is one of the great things about HTML. Even ignorant / lazy / time-constrained developers are likely to output something that sorta works, just since they’re using divs and imgs and whatnot.
And the bar is so low! Adding accessibility labels takes not much effort at all. And, as an added bonus, accessible apps are easier to test, since testing frameworks like Playwright can hook into accessibility info directly to validate assertions.